Friday, December 09, 2005

Campbell's Select Switcheroo

Have you seen the commercial for the Cambell's Select Gold Label Soups with the dancing John Lithgow? It looks like it was directed by Terry Gilliam. Lithgow is not a dancer, to say the least, and the Lithgow Follies cavorting around him are exponentially more disturbing than the tap dancing messenger in Brazil while expressing to the same degree her wrongness. At any second I expect them to burst out with "It's Christmas in Heaven."

In spite of all this, I was intrigued to see them hawking the Campbell's Select Gold Label "Golden Butternut Squash" Soup. I love squash - and nobody makes a squash soup. So off I ran to buy a package.

Imagine me this morning in my kitchen, all trapped in the sleet and hungry for a bowl of steaming Golden Butternut Squash soup. I had my favorite blue bowl out and my special round spoon on the counter when I cut open the box and, um, what's this? It was all stuck in the box in a granular clump. My Golden Butternut Squash soup wasn't pouring in a thick golden cascade of squashy goodness into my pot. No, I had to get a spatula and prize it out, like mud from the cleat of my boot.

And, you know how potatoes smell all potato-y? And not like squash, even a little bit? Squash smells clean and sweet. Potatoes smell like nightshade mealy mush. I didn't like what I smelled coming out of that box. It wasn't clean and sweet at all. It was mealy, nigthshadish, potato reek! And then I tasted a bit of this grainy so-called squash soup - and it didn't taste like squash AT ALL!

I grabbed the box and read the label. A-HA! Some way or other, they got squash listed first on the label, but there at number two was the culprit. Potato! Potato! Potato!

Campbell's is pulling a switcheroo. They promise squash but deliver potato. Let the world know the truth!

I happen to absolutely love this soup and I know I am not alone. There were 5 times in a row that my grocery store was completely sold out of the Campbell's Gold Select Golden Butternut Squash Soup. I asked the stock boys and sensed their frustration when they told me they get a shipment in every day, but they still can't keep it in stock. It flies off the shelves. Day before yesteday was the first time I'd gotten there before everyone else in a month and only left two on the shelf for another lover of the soup to find.

I pitty your close-mindedness. On a side note, do you not realize that most substances are thicker at room temperature than hot? You want super runny soup when it's hot? It doesn't make any sense. And flat-tasting?!?! You obviously didn't eat even close to all of the soup. It is almost spicy after eating the whole thing....the flavor builds and creeps up on you afterwards. I can taste it for long after eating it. Oh, and you have to be smarter than the packaging, or at least as smart as the packaging designer. The reason you only cut the corner off the box and it's flexible is you are supposed to SQUEEZE the soup out of the package. Plus, the box is already crushed to take up less space in the garbage. I think it's genious! Way to go dirtying a rubber scrapper unnecessarily, Brainiac!